LEGAL CASE AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT OF CANADA FOR GENOCIDE AGAINST INDIGENOUS PEOPLE

LEGAL CASE AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT OF CANADA FOR GENOCIDE AGAINST INDIGENOUS PEOPLE

Friday, January 21, 2005

Dear Mr. Sandstrom and Brooks:

Here are two documents with some arguments and legal authorities that we plan to introduce at trial. As I have noted, most of our arguments, and citations for legal authority/precedent, are embodied in the documents already in your possession: Blackfoot Indictment of U.S. and Canadian Governments For Genocide (already accepted into the Court record); previous submissions of specific arguments to be advanced at trial; endorsement of proposed arguments by the National Lawyer’s Guild; facsimiles of newspaper articles on sterilization and medical experimentation on First Nations persons.

I have asked Bella to make copies of any Tribal documents or personal family documents and get them to Mr. Brooks immediately and I hope that they have been delivered. The bulk of our submissions will be through expert testimonies of the witnesses that we gave notice would be called to testify.

Finally, as it is our Way, even when in Courts that operate on principles not consistent with our Ways, we welcome full and open debate of all the relevant issues; we do not believe in using procedure or contrived scopes of direct examination to limit or contrive possible scopes and content of rebuttal; and if you do need more time to deal with the Treaty 7 arguments, and ask for further continuance beyond the two days allotted for this phase of the trial, we will accommodate whatever is required to ensure that the Crown has ample time to properly answer any and all submissions and arguments by us to your satisfaction.

We only ask that you keep in mind the costs for me to travel to Alberta and that Bella is being represented–through no fault of her own or mine and not for financial reasons–by someone who is not a lawyer and not familiar with some of the procedures etc.

Thank you for your consideration.
James M. Craven
Unpaid agent for the pro se defense of Bella Yellow Horn

Your letter of December 4, 2003 is acknowledged. Together with this reply it will be attached to the Clerk’s file.

Mr. Craven’s proposed intention to challenge the constitutionality of Treaty 7 creates an entirely new issue. Subject to submissions, it would appear that either a supplementary or entirely revised constitutional notice must be prepared and properly served on all concerned–including the Government of Canada.

When that is done, should we even attempt to have the trial proceed on January 22 and 23, 2004?Or should there be another pre-trial conference to determine what adequate time is required in order to properly complete the trial of all issues at a later date? Split trials should be avoided whenever reasonably proper!

This matter can be discussed in a telephone conference call. Either Assistant Chief Judge J.A. Wood, or myself, or both, can participate.

This matter should not be delayed.

Yours truly,

R.A. Jacobson (signed)

RAJ/bjs

cc: James M. Craven, Clark College
Eric Brooks, Crown Prosecutor

Mr. Craven,

This will acknowledge your email of November 16, 2003, which I received on that date. Thank you for providing additional information concerning your case.

I was unable to discuss this with Mr. Brooks until today. We will not be contacting your witnesses, but we do appreciate the invitation to do so by conference call. I can also advise that I noticed your potential challenge to Treaty 7 in your email on October 12. As this was the first time I understood you to be challenging Treaty 7, I immediately contacted our expert on treaty documents and was advised by him on October 14, 2003 that he would be unavailable to testify on January 22 and 23. He will be able to testify in April, May or June however. Therefore, I am going to write the Court and advise that if credible evidence concerning the validity of Treaty 7 is advanced at trial, I will need to request an adjournment. I will send you a copy of that correspondence.

In the meantime, I renew my request for you to send documents to me which you intend to file in evidence. I understand that you are working on that. It will greatly simplify our task on January 22 and 23.

This is to acknowledge receipt of and to respond to your most recent email and letter to Judge Jacobson dated December 4, 2003.

This may be the first time you understood that we would be challenging the validity and applicability of Treaty 7, but it is most certainly not the first time we made clear our intent to advance this dimsension of our overall argument. Attached is our whole file on this case from the earliest letter to the Court by me onward. For example, from my letter of Feb. 10, 2003 to the Court and also sent to you and others involved in this case:

a)That there is indeed a real and viable Blackfoot Nation still in existence despite past and present attempts at its extermination or elimination and that Bella Yellowhorn is indeed a member of that Nation;

b)That the existence or non-existence of any nation is not in any way dependent upon recognition or non-recognition by other recognized nations (particularly those such as Canada or the U.S. that have acquired and built material interests in denying the existence and legitimacy-and derivative rights of independence, self-determination and sovereignty-of First Nations and/or other nations); the existence, legitimacy-and derivative rights-of all nations are a matter of “facts on the ground” and international law as were it not so, any nation could summarily extinguish another nation (genocide) through simple non-recognition and applied power disparities;

c)Although some Blackfoot deny that Treaty 7 was actually signed by the principal chiefs of the Blackfoot, the Government of Canada does assert Treaty 7 to be binding and has built a whole system of supposed property rights and material interests upon that and other Treaties. According to the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, recognized by both the U.S. and Canadian Supreme Courts as the “definitive international law on treaties and treaty relations”, only sovereign nations can sign treaties and in doing so, each party explicitly and tacitly recognizes the other treating party as a co-equal and legitimate representative of a whole People being bound by that Treaty. In recognizing the legitimacy of a treating party, each party is also tacitly, if not explicitly, recognizing-or not calling into question-the legitimacy of the mechanisms and institutions through which the representatives and government of the treating parties were selected and the traditional Blackfoot mechanisms and institutions through which the alleged Blackfoot Chiefs and signatories of Treaty 7 were selected remain in force among traditional Blackfoot despite any impositions of alternative political forms (Tribal Councils) under the Indian Act;

And from my letter of April 12, 2003 to the Court and sent to you and other parties involved in this case:

3) Any purported obligations of Blackfoot under Treaty 7 that serve to denationalize or cause Blackfoot to surrender to all laws and authority of the Crown are contradictory and in violation of international law and those aspects of the Canadian Constitution dealing with genocide. Only sovereign nations may sign treaties and according to the Vienna Convention on Treaties, which the U.S. and Canadian Supreme Courts have recognized as definitive international law on treaties, each treating partner recognizes–or at least does not call into question–the authority, co-equal status and systems for determining government/leadership of the other. The cited language of Treaty 7, dealing with Blackfoot allegedly agreeing to become loyal subjects of Her Majesty the Queen and all of her laws, if accepted, would mean that Blackfoot, as a sovereign nation, would be signing a treaty whose terms and language served to extinguish the very sovereign nation that had the authority and standing to sign–and continue–such a treaty; no nation, especially Blackfoot, would ever sign such a treaty that would be illegal and non-binding under international law and basic contract law. These asserted obligations under Treaty 7, along with Treaty 7 itself, are simply not valid under even Canadian Law. Further, Treaty 7 was not fully and finally ratified by the Crown in London as required prior to 1947. Further, according to the notes of Father Constantine Scullen, representative of the Crown to attest to the signatures of the Blackfoot Chiefs on Treaty 7, none of the Chiefs would make a mark with their own hand nor would they even touch the pen used to make the mark and therefore Treaty 7 and any purported allegiances or obligations of Indigenous Peoples under Treaty 7 would not exist, eventhough the Government of Canada has asserted Treaty 7 to be binding and has built a whole system of “private” property, interests and purported property rights under its provisions.

and from my letter to Mr. Lambrecht of Sept. 10, 2003 (also forwarded to you):

Further, we argue that Treaty 7 was never signed and/or never a full and binding Treaty and thus any purported obligations of Blackfoot under Treaty 7 to become “loyal subjects” of the Crown and bound by all Canadian laws do not exist as a matter of international law;

Further, we argue that although Canada claims that Treaty 7 was properly signed and valid, although we dispute this claim with historical evidence, Canada has nonetheless built up whole system of material interests and purported property rights based upon the assumption of the validity of Treaty 7; under international law, specifically the Vienna Convention on Treaties, only nations sign, continue and enforce treaties and each treating partner when signing a treaty, recognizes the co-equal status and systems of government (producing the leadership having the standing and authority to sign a treaty and bind a whole population to its terms) of the other treating partner(s) and thus there is ample legal authority for the continued existence of the Blackfoot Nation with its own right to independence, self-determination, sovereignty and traditional government and mechanisms for selecting the composition of that government. Thus, Bella Yellow Horn, a member of a sovereign Blackfoot Nation, and all members of the Blackfoot Nation, may travel throughout Canadian lands with the same status and obligations (vis-a-vis licensing and insurance) as any other motorist from another sovereign nation.

We have made it clear that although we believe that Treaty 7 was never signed by the Blackfoot Chiefs (according to the diary of Fr. Scullen charged with being a witness to the signatures of the Blackfoot Chiefs), was never ratified by the Crown, was put to the Blackfoot Chiefs with coercive and unconscionable force and has been violated over and over by the Canadian Government, our central argument is that Treaty 7 is self-impeaching and internally self-negating as its central terms call for dissolution of one of the sovereign nations that must remain in existence and sovereign to have the standing, authority and capabilities to sign and keep the terms of such a Treaty into the future. We have advanced this argument over and over clearly.

I am therefore at a loss to understand why any further delays would be necessary.

I have asked Bella to quickly put together any documents we may use to advance our case (She is in possession of some family and other documents) to send them to you. And I reiterate that if you choose to depose our potential witnesses, whose names, telephone numbers and likely testimonies and arguments have been given, I would only ask that I be allowed to stand or listen in and participate if necessary.

I would also ask that you forward to us the names, telephone numbers, likely testimonies, backgrounds of any potential witnesses along with any documents that you might plan to introduce. Also, I must ask again that we get the name of the person who filed the complaint with the Lethbridge Police that led to Bella Yellow Horn being stopped and subsequently charged (as was promised) and the chain of custody and present whereabouts of her van that was seized.

Thank you for your assistance and patience. Would you please forward this to Judge Jacobson whose email address I do not have?

James Craven
(Omahkohkiaayo i’poyi)

cc. Judge Jacobson

Mr. Craven:

This will acknowledge your communication below my email of October 12, 2003. By copy of this email, I am forwarding your communication to Eric Brooks and Kirk Lambrecht.

I appreciate your advice as to your proposed witnesses. I also understand that you are still working on which documents you wish to produce at the trial of January 22 and 23. Unless you can provide me a clear indication of what the substance of your proposed Elder testimony will be, the best way to deal with this will be to have the Elders proceed with their testimony, and then adjourn in order to have these historical facts, and the documents relied on by you, examined by an expert for the Crown.

You should forward to me the documents upon which you will be seeking to file in evidence before the Court. I can then advise you whether the Crown will consent to the filing of these documents, or whether you must prove them in the normal way. This may entail getting certified copies, or producing a witness who has knowledge about these documents. If I know what the document is and know it is authentic, I will in most likelihood consent to its admission and can save you these steps. Even though you may have provided some of these documents to the Crown and the Court, please send me a complete bundle with each document labeled (either under a tab number, or a document number on the first page of the document). I will then review each document and advise you which can go into evidence by consent, and which you will have to prove.

I will leave it to Mr. Brooks to determine whether it would be appropriate to communicate any of your comments to the court. You are certainly free to communicate with the Court directly, I would only ask that you send me a copy of that communication.

Thanks for your response and helping with outlining the procedures involved in submissions of documentary evidence and proposed lines of argument. In this regard, below is an example of some of the evidence on the genocidal nature of the Indian Act and the right/survival imperative of First Nations Peoples not to recognize or obey it. For the record, this applies specifically to Bella Yellow Horn in particular as she was slated to be sterilized under the color of the Indian Act and Alberta Sterilization Act and was only saved from sterilization with some last-minute legal intervention. Had she recognized and–complied with–her obligations under these Acts, which were in violation of Article II (d) of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide to which Canada is a signatory, her present children would simply not exist and the Blackfoot Nation would have ben deprived of some of its citizens. Further, Bella and other members of her family were used for medical experimentation in the Indian Residential Schools, again under the color of “law” and supposed “obligations” under–and to comply with–the Indian Act which were in violation of Articles II (a), (b), (c),(d) and (e) of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide (see below).

We are attempting to comply with all your discovery and other rights prior to trial. We do not have the resources available to us that the Crown has and therefore our responses might not be all that you are used to. In any case, we have made good-faith attempts to comply with all our pre-trial obligations and ask that our constraints are understood. Those potential witnesses to be called all have specialized and personal knowledge/experiences with the genocidal nature and consequences of the Indian Act and/or Treaty 7 “obligations” past and present and will show that any First Nations person recognizing/obeying the Indian Act would be aiding and abetting their own extermination and that of their own People, would themselves be complicit in genocide, and in violation of several articles of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide; and those who refuse to recognize or comply with the Indian Act are objectively acting as agents of the higher or “supreme law” of Canada.

As many as 100 of the children at the centre of the Alberta sterilization scandal of the late 1960s and early 1970s were also used as guinea pigs in drug trials, the National Post has learned. The children lived at the Provincial Training School in Red Deer. Some were wards of the province and others were placed in the school by their parents, who did not consent to the sterilization or medical experimentation, which included the administration of powerful steroids and anti-psychotic drugs. Experts say one of the drugs used, the anabolic steroid norbolethone, is illegal today. The anti-psychotic tranquilizer haloperidol was also used. Its effect on children is said to be akin to hitting them over the head with a sledge hammer.

Yesterday, 40 people who were sterilized against their will reached a settlement totalling $4-million with the government of Alberta. This brings to 540 the number of people who have settled with the province for being sterilized under the now-defunct Alberta Sterilization Act, which was in effect from 1928 to 1972. The operations were ordered by Alberta’s eugenics board to prevent the mentally disabled from passing on their defects to offspring. Lawyers say they want more money from the government for victims who had to endure being tested with powerful drugs in addition to being sterilized. “Invading people’s rights in the form of unauthorized research and taking advantage of people who couldn’t look after themselves is the kind of thing that courts award punitive damages for,” said Jon Faulds, an Edmonton lawyer representing 109 sterilization victims still negotiating settlements.

Allan Garber, another Edmonton lawyer acting for the former training school residents, said they were treated like cattle. “The experimental drug treatment only compounds the evil that was done to our clients.” Dr. Leonard J. LeVann, medical superintendent from 1949 to 1974 at the Red Deer school, published the results of his drug experiments in scholarly journals, which were recently turned over to lawyers for the victims. The articles show that Dr. LeVann, who is dead, gave 100 undersized children the anabolic steroid norbolethone over a 12-month period in 1971. The drug — now illegal in Canada — made the children gain weight. But it also produced some side effects: the genitals of two boys increased in size and one girl’s voice deepened.”The treatment of retarded growth in children with anabolic agents is controversial,” he wrote in the September 1971 edition of the International Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, Therapy and Toxicology. Nonetheless, he called the drug study “entirely satisfactory.”

Norbolethone is illegal today because of its powerful side effects – damage to the liver and negative psychological symptoms. Anabolic steroids can also increase aggressive sexual behaviour in men and cause secondary sexual characteristics, for example, facial hair in girls. Dr. LeVann also gave 100 children haloperidol, an anti-psychotic tranquilizer, over a period of 40 days in the late 1960s to counter hyperactivity and excitability. Dr. Louis Pagliaro, a professor of educational psychology and the associate director of the substance abusology research unit at the University of Alberta, says haloperidol “would essentially knock(children) out. (It) generally decreases people’s ability to learn and adversely affects memory and behaviour.” Dr. LeVann’s studies are “full of half-truths, assumptions and by today’s standards, lack proper research methodology,” says Dr. Pagliaro.

About 2,800 people were sterilized in Alberta before the Sexual Sterilization Act was finally repealed. Documents now show that many of the people sterilized were not mentally disabled.

In 1996, the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench ordered the provincial government to pay Leilani Muirer $740,000 for being wrongfully confined in the Red Deer school and sterilized. Her landmark victory opened a floodgate of litigation. In June, 1998, the government agreed to pay 500 more sterilization claimants up to $100,000. Many continue to live in the Red Deer facility, known today as the Michener Centre. The province has spent $54 million on settlements to date. The compensation deal for the sterilizaiton victims announced yesterday, much the same as those announced last June, gives claimants $75,000 now and another $25,000 after three years, if they are then living outside institutions.

The Globe and Mail, Wednesday, April 26, 2000 Native children deprived of care Preventive dentistry banned during study

By Michael Valpy

Federal-government doctors withheld specialized dental care for children in eight aboriginal residential schools in the 1940s and 1950s to see what the effect would be on their teeth and overall health. The specialized dental care was withheld as part of a five-year study of aboriginal children’s nutrition. The study’s director, Dr. L. B. Pett, the retired chief of the nutrition division of the Department of National Health and Welfare, said parental consent was not obtained for the study. Instead, the government obtained permission from the school principals.

A letter dated Oct. 3, 1949, from Dr. H. K. Brown, chief of the department’s dental health division, said: “It is important that during the period of this study, no specialized, over-all type of dental service should be provided, such as the use of sodium fluoride, dental prophylaxis [professional cleaning] or even urea compounds [used in treatment of decay].

“In this study dental caries [decay] and gingivitis [gum disease] are both important factors in assessing nutritional status. The caries index could be upset by such specialized dental measures as those referred to above.

The letter — referring specifically to the United Church school in Port Alberni, B.C. — also said that preventive dental treatment would make the study of “questionable value” in measuring vitamin C deficiency.

Professor Gary Accursi of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Dentistry said yesterday that a dental-ethics committee would be unlikely to approve such a trial today. He said he did not know whether it would have passed the ethical standards of the time.

A Toronto medical expert on clinical trials, who asked not to be identified, said the letter, on its face, implied clearly that the Canadian government was prepared to let aboriginal children suffer the effects of poor nutrition without intervention so long as its study was not adulterated.

Dr. Pett, in an interview yesterday, put the study, which he said was conducted at eight schools, in a different context. It was carried out, he said, to improve nutrition for aboriginal children and provide information on good nutrition for their parents.

Fluoride treatment, now considered one of history’s greatest public-health advances, was then in its infancy. The first fluoride trials in Canada, in Stratford and Brantford, were being carried out at the time of the study. The only thing that bothered Dr. Pett about the study from an ethical point of view, he said, was the absence of parental consent. “Parental consent was always an issue,” he said. “It was hard to contact them. So many were in the bush.”

So the study went ahead, he said, with the consent of the school principals, who were given more-or-less legal status as in loco parentis (in the place of a parent).

The records of the nutritional study were found in Ottawa’s National Archives by freelance writer David Napier, commissioned by the Anglican Journal, the newspaper of the Anglican Church of Canada, to inquire into aboriginal residential schools. The Journal will publish his article, the result of eight months research, later this month.

The schools were operated by churches in a contractual relationship with the federal government for more than a century.

Children as young as five were taken away from their families and placed in the schools. They were ordered not to use their mother tongue and to set aside their cultural values and practices.

The Roman Catholic, Anglican and United Churches, along with the federal government, face hundreds of millions of dollars in lawsuits from nearly 6,000 former students.

Copyright 2000 The Globe and Mail

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Fax: (780) 427-1230

Mr. Craven,

I understand from the Prosecutors’ Office that he continuation date for this trial has been set for January 22 and 23, 2004 in front of Judge Jacobson. I have been asked to ensure you are informed of this date. We have Canada’s letter dated September 23, 2003 to you indicating they will not intervene in the trial at this stage. It would help me prepare if you could, by the end of November, or earlier, advise me of the following information: 1. Will you be calling witnesses, or do you intend on just making the arguments you outline in your correspondence to the Court, Canada, or us? 2. If you are calling witnesses, who will they be? 3. What is the brief substance of their testimony? 4. Will you be filing any documents (there are strict rules on how this is done for some documents)? If you want to file documents, it would help me to know which ones you intend to file. I can help you on the proper procedure for filing these documents.

Thanks for the note and I apologize for the delay in writing back as I am totally swamped with work and did not want to reply in a cursory or superficial way.

First of all, I did get notice from Mr. Lambrecht that the Canadian Federal Government would not be intervening at this stage but did want to be notified in the event of an appeal and perhaps would step in at that stage. I do also need to contact Mr. Lambrecht and perhaps this note to you will suffice for his purposes as well so please feel free to share this with him and whomever else is concerned with this matter including Judge Jacobson, Mr. Falconer, Mr. Brooks and any others.

As you know our defense involves several dimensions. I do apologize for any delays caused by our not having had full documentation available, but, as our resources are meager relative to those of the Canadian Federal and Alberta Governments, and as I am forced to rely on others to take care of some matters inside Alberta, and as I am assisting a pro se defense without legal assistance in Alberta, such problems are likely and unintended. For the record, we Blackfoot do not have or practice any of the concepts and practices so typical of the adversarial eurocentric court systems that have been routinely used to facilitate and give legal cover to genocide and genocide cover-up in Canada: excessive ritual and protocol; jury/judge/venue shopping; contrived and shaped scopes/content of direct examinations in order to limit and shape possible scopes/content of redirect examinations; not asking questions to which we do not already have an answer; attempting to magnify the exculpatory and minimize the inculpatory in our own case while attempting to minimize the exculpatory and maximize the inculpatory of the opponent’s case; obstruction of discovery and use of discovery to cause prohibitive legal costs and obstruct justice; paid–dueling–”expert witnesses” whose formal credentials give their opinions “probative value” and the status of “evidence”; etc.

As you probably noted, not only did we give notice of intent to raise Constitutional issues (I am still exploring getting documentation that notice was indeed sent from the Peigan Band Reserch Department on April 22 as was represented to me to have been done) but we gave notice of the specific content of those arguments. These are indeed the arguments we will be raising. Further, we provided a letter of endorsement from the National Lawyer’s Guild, composed of Canadian as well as U.S. lawyers and many of them considered experts in international law, that was intended to show that the arguments that we proposed to advance were not frivolous or a frivolous use of the Court’s time–in terms of available supporting evidence, reasoning and international law. We asked the NLG only to support our contention that our arguments were not frivolous without necessarily adopting or endorsing them, but the NLG came back, to our surprise, actually endorsing and adopting those arguments.

First, I will be calling Bella Yellow Horn back to the stand to clear up some issues from the previous phase and to set up the next phase of the trial. Specifically, we will be exploring her state of mind at the time she was stopped in Lethbridge and her reasons for asserting the existence and sovereignty of the Blackfoot Nation and not being bound by the Indian Act or any asserted obligations under Treaty 7. We will also explore how she was supposed to document what papers she did or didn’t have in her possession at the time of being stopped, and what insurance she did or did not have (as a matter of personal choice), when her van was taken to a place she was not made aware of and summarily sold without her knowledge and before her even being convicted, to a party still unknown to her.

Next, we will call the following witnesses: Mr. John Chief Moon (Thunder Pipe Carrier and principal spiritual leader of the Kainai Blackfoot); Mr. George Yellow Horn (one of the Hereditary Chiefs of the Apatohsipiikani Blackfoot); Elizabeth Yellow horn (principle Beaver Bundle Holder and spiritual leader of the Apatohsipiikani Blackfoot) and Mr. Floyd Many Fingers (respected Elder of the Kainai Blackfoot). These witnesses, in addition to being descendants some of the Chiefs who allegedly signed Treaty 7 and recognized carriers of the oral histories of the events surrounding the alleged signing of Treaty 7, are also very “expert” on the conditions of life on the Blackfoot Reserves. We believe that their testimonies will materially add to our arguments that:

a) the scope and content of the Indian Act and alleged obligations under Treaty 7 are genocidal per se and,in addition, have produced conditions of life that amount to genocide as defined in Article II of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide ratified by Canada in 1953 and thus part of the supreme law of Canada;

b) these genocidal conditions flow inexorably (and foreseeably for anyone with an IQ over that of a tomato and a semblance of a heart and a conscience) from the content and applications of the Indian Act and Treaty 7;

c) the Canadian and Alberta Governments have been well aware (and have been repeatedly made well aware)of these genocidal conditions and their effects and continue to refuse to ameliorate them and continue to attempt to cover them up;

d)in the context of extreme poverty, isolated reserves, no public transport and meager incomes given under the Indian Act, any Blackfoot obeying the requirement to possess highly expensive insurance as a condition of driving is in essence aiding and abetting his/her own extermination and that of his/her People;

e) by any test or criteria under international law that defines a nation, the same tests and criteria defining Canada as a nation, there survives and remains a Blackfoot Nation that has, as fundamental rights flowing from its status and reality as a nation, the rights to independence, sovereignty, self-determination, recognition and not to be exterminated or forcibly assimilated into another nation;

f) although we argue that Treaty 7 was never signed, and has been broken over and over by the Canadian and Alberta governments, nevertheless, the Canadian and Alberta governments have built up a whole system of property and purported property rights predicated on Treaty 7 and in doing so were bound to recognize not only the authority and standing of the Chiefs who allegedly signed Treaty 7, but also the traditional Blackfoot Ways and systems of government that selected these Chiefs as well as the existence and sovereignty of the Blackfoot Nation as only sovereign nations form and sign treaties and in doing so recognize treating partners and co-equals at least in terms of authority and standing to form and keep treaties;

g) Blackfoot may choose to become or recognized as Canadian citizens but no Blackfoot may be forced to assimilate or forced to take Canadian citizenship and undertake the obligations of Canadian citizenship as this amounts to forced assimilation, a form and tactic of genocide;

h) Blackfoot are rountinely subject to “racial targeting and profiling” by Lethbridge police and routinely have their vehicles seized and sold without due process such that they are deprived of mobility from–and are indeed locked into–conditions on Reserves that can only be properly described as genocidal.

In addition to the paper by Tai Helton that I passed on to you, and in addition to the documents already submitted to the Court, we will be submitting copies of the diaries of Father Constantine Scullen, charged by The Crown with witnessing the signatures of the Blackfoot Chiefs who supposedly signed Treaty 7, in which he stated that none of the Chiefs would sign or even touch the pen used to sign; we will also be submitting some statistics, from Canadian Government sources, that document some of the genocidal conditions, realities and trends on the Blackfoot Reserves today.

That is as much as I can give you at this moment. In the next couple of weeks I will be able to give you further elaboration on our proposed arguments and witnesses. If you wish further elaboration on some of our arguments, you can go to http://www.chgs.umn.edu/ and under the section “Histories, Narratives and Documents” you will find some Blackfoot documents that will give you some of the types of arguments and supporting evidence we plan to introduce.

I will also be asking about possible incomplete transcripts from previous Court sessions. For example, at the May 20th session, at which I was not in attendance, Bella represented to me that the Judge formally inquired of the police officers present where her van was and asked those police to advise her where the van was and its status. That discussion is not on the official transcript I have of that session. I am interested in that issue particularly in view of the testimony of the arresting officer that he could only “guess” that her van had been sold and that he had never explicitly told Bella that it had indeed been sold. Further, I was promised by Mr. Brooks, in a conversation with Bella present, when Bella asked the name of the person who had made the phone call that led to her being stopped, Mr. Brooks said that I must request that name and I have formally requested it previously and am now formally requesting it again.

Further, I may have to call Mr. Scott as he was present in his office when that officer stated that the van had indeed been sold and made no mention of “guessing” that it had been sold. And yes, any assistance that you can give us in the spirit of being an “Officer of the Court” and in the interest of justice would be welcomed.

I hope that this answers at least some of your questions. If you require any further elaboration please do not hestitate to contact me. For the record, although Blackfoot are generally poor, we are communalists and come to the assistance of each other as a matter of our Ways. If we could have found a lawyer to take this case we would have put out an appeal for money and would have gotten sufficent funds to hire a lwayer. We are not trying to do this “on the cheap.” We do not practice, as is celebrated and taught in Canadian capitalism and society, rat-race individualism, dog-eat-dog competition, selfishness, etc. We approached lawyers who agreed that our constitutional arguments were compelling as a matter of evidence, reasoning and law but were afraid to advance them in a Canadian Court out of fear of retribution in future cases and legal practice in Alberta. Others feared they might be labelled “radicals” for any association with this case (the word “radical” as you know comes from the Latin root “radix” or root and we regard a radical as someone seeking to get to the “root” of the issues at hand).

And finally, and please pass this on to Judge Jacobson, he can instruct us and make rulings that we will obey, although we may make “exceptions” for the Court record, without resorting to abusive levels and tones of speech and continual references to supposed “incompetence” on my part. It is out of respect to the honorable actions and rulings on his part that I do not challenge his continuing to sit on this case for cause of demonstrated animus and disrespect in the last session. I am proud to be an “unpaid agent” of exposing genocide and genocide cover-up rather than a paid–and perhaps very “competent”–agent of genocide and its cover-up as some lawyers and judges have demonstrated themselves to be historically and in the present in Canada [and this is not necessarily an implied or covert reference to His Honor].

Thanks for your consideration, patience and any assistance in the interest of justice.

I wish to advise that the Attorney General of Canada does not intend to intervene at this stage of the proceedings. I would however like to be advised of the decision on that issue and to be served with notice of any appeal that is taken therefrom.

Thank you for your patience and assistance. Part of the problem on our side is that since the Attorney General of Alberta has already stipulated to having received proper notice of intent to raise constitutional issues some time ago (April 8, 2003) and seems to be aware of the specific arguments to be advanced as well as the specific statutes, regulations, acts and treaty to which we take exception, it is difficult for a layperson to understand how and why the federal requirements for “proper notice” would/should be significantly different.

Thank you for your consideration and assistance in the interest of justice for all sides of this case.

James M. Craven (Omahkohkiaayo i’poyi)

Mr. Craven
Thank you.

I am considering the sufficiency of the notice i.e. whether it complies with the obligation to identify a statute or regulation which is alleged to be inoperative, inapplicable or invalid.

Mr. Lambrecht:

May I assume that this notice of receipt is also notice of having received proper service of intent to raise constitutional issues in the case of Bella Yellowhorn?

Thank you again for your assistance and patience.

James Craven (Omahkohkiaayo i’poyi)

Mr. Craven
Thank you. I have received this.
Kirk Lambrecht

Dear Mr. Lambrecht:

Thank you for your acknowledgment and request for further specifics in order that this notice be complete and comply with legal requirements for proper notice.

Specifically we are arguing that the Indian Act is genocidal per se and presently, violates at least Articles II b,c, and e of the 1948 UN Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide ratified by Canada in 1953 and part of the Supreme Law of Canada; we will argue that any asserted obligations of Blackfoot under the Indian Act, or under Treaty 7, including obligations to obey the licensing and insurance requirements under the Alberta Motor Vehicles Act, amount to demanding that Blackfoot aid and abet ongoing genocide against the Blackfoot Nation collectively as well as against members individually.

Further, we argue that forced assimilation and Canadian citizenship of Blackfoot, and associated forced obligations that go with forced assimilation and Canadian citizenship, are genocidal per se and violate the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide which is part of the Supreme Law of Canada.

Further, we argue that Treaty 7 was never signed and/or never a full and binding Treaty and thus any purported obligations of Blackfoot under Treaty 7 to become “loyal subjects” of the Crown and bound by all Canadian laws do not exist as a matter of international law;

Further, we argue that although Canada claims that Treaty 7 was properly signed and valid, although we dispute this claim with historical evidence, Canada has nonetheless built up whole system of material interests and purported property rights based upon the assumption of the validity of Treaty 7; under international law, specifically the Vienna Convention on Treaties, only nations sign, continue and enforce treaties and each treating partner when signing a treaty, recognizes the co-equal status and systems of government (producing the leadership having the standing and authority to sign a treaty and bind a whole population to its terms) of the other treating partner(s) and thus there is ample legal authority for the continued existence of the Blackfoot Nation with its own right to independence, self-determination, sovereignty and traditional government and mechanisms for selecting the composition of that government. Thus, Bella Yellow Horn, a member of a sovereign Blackfoot Nation, and all members of the Blackfoot Nation, may travel throughout Canadian lands with the same status and obligations (vis-a-vis licensing and insurance) as any other motorist from another sovereign nation.

I hope that meets your requirements for proper notice and specificity in terms of what specific Acts or laws are being challenged; this is also notice of an affirmative defense in terms of an affirmative obligation not to obey Canadian laws that objectively promote de facto genocide against Blackfoot Peoples.

Sincerely,

James M. Craven (Omahkohkiaayo i’poyi)

Mr. Craven

I understand that the attached email is your Constitutional Notice under the Judicature Act of Alberta. I confirm I received it by email.

The notice is required to identify the Act or Regulation which you say is invalid, inoperative or inapplicable. I do not see this here.

I understand from your discussion with me that you intend to argue that those provisions of Treaty 7 and the Indian Act, which confirm an obligation to comply with provincial law, including the Alberta law which requires a person to obtain insurance before operating a motor vehicle, are somehow constitutionally invalid.

I would ask you to confirm that this is, in fact, what you intend to argue.

You will appreciate that the obligation to identify the Act or Regulation which you say is invalid, inoperative or inapplicable is on the litigant asserting the claim, not on the Government.

Thank you.

Kirk Lambrecht
Counsel

Dear Mr. Sandstrom, Mr. Brooks and Judge Jacobsen:

I am sending this notice in care of Mr. Sandstrom to be cc’d also to Mr. Falconer, Mr. Brooks and Judge Jacobsen. I just sent to the web address given for the Attorney General of the Federal Government of Canada: a) my letter dated April 12, 2003 written as official notice of intent to raise constitutional issues in the case of R. v Bella Yellow Horn, Provincial Court of Lethbridge, Alberta, s.71(1)(a) MVA; b) the National Lawyer’s Guild Letter of support and endorsement for some of our proposed constitutional arguments; c) a copy of our Blackfoot Indictment of the Governments of Canada and the U.S. for Genocide (all accepted into the Court record in Lethbridge to the best of my knowledge). These were sent with a Return/Read function sent and the above are acknowledgments and receipts that they have been received by the Office of the Attorney General of Canada. When I receive acknowledgments that they have been read (or at least opened) I will send those receipts as well.

Further, I am making inquiries to obtain the telephone records and/or receipts of transmissions from the fax machine at the Research Department of the Peigan Band Office on April 22, 2003 to attempt to document that official notice was indeed sent to the Attorney General of the Canadian Federal Government of intent to raise constitutional issues as was represented to me to have occurred by Bella Yellow Horn.

I must also note that a finding that Bella Yellow Horn was indeed insured at the time she was stopped and subsequently charged with driving without insurance, does not, and should not, make her constitutional and other arguments “moot”. We gave notice previously that this case would involve the legal existence and application of Blackfoot National Sovereignty, constitutional issues and applications of the 1948 UN Convention on the Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide, ratified in 1953 by the Government of Canada and thus part of the Supreme Law of Canada; in a previous Court session on April 8, 2003 we noted that we would not be stipulating on the issue of whether or not Bella Yellow Horn was indeed “insured” as the burden of proof on that issue rests with the Crown. Further, if Bella Yellowhorn represents to me, as she did, that she was indeed “insured” and believed herself to be insured (as a matter of personal choice and not as a matter of any obligations recognized by her under the Indian Act, Treaty 7 or summarily-imposed Canadian Citizenship), I am bound to raise that defense as well since not to do so would involve a form of fraud upon/misuse of the Court stipulating what Bella Yellow Horn considers to be untrue for the purposes of using the Court to raise other issues and defenses.

Further, in a brief conversation with Mr. Brooks, Bella Yellow Horn asked for the name of the person who made the phone call to the Lethbridge Police that led to her being stopped for possible impaired driving. Mr. Brooks indicated that I must request that name and I am hereby formally doing so in this letter.

Next, in the Courts of Canada every day, attorneys with law degrees and considerable trial experience suffer sustained or overruled objections, and Judges are often reversed on appeal; this indicates that possession of a law degree and admission to the Alberta Bar is no guarantee that no mistakes are made by those trained in law. In a pro se defense, Judges can easily give guidance and make their rulings without shouting, anger and clearly abusive tones and content of speech–and without compromising the right of the Crown to a fair trial. Further, when I indicated to His Honor that we had tried to secure Counsel in Alberta and were unable to do so, as we were told by some attorneys that they feared being labeled “radicals” and being compromised to practice in future cases and/or were unwilling to raise Constitutional arguments, His Honor made the comment to the effect that to secure an attorney that attorney must be paid. We found this comment to be deeply offensive and troubling as well as beneath the obvious considerable learning and preparation of His Honor. Further, His Honor accused me of intentionally attempting to “cherry pick” favorable evidence and arguments while attempting to hide the unfavorable to our case.

Although this is exactly what the Eurocentric Courts are all about–magnifying the positives while minimizing or hiding the negatives of one’s own case while doing the reverse to the opposition or magnifying their negatives while hiding or suppressing their positives of their case (which I might add Mr. Brooks and Mr. Sandstrom did not attempt to do as they acted very honorably during the trial)–in Blackfoot terms this is a charge of acting dishonorably and deceptively and His Honor was purporting to be inside my head and “knowing” my subjective intentions. I should note that every single Blackfoot Elder present in Court was of the opinion that His Honor was intentionally trying to provoke me into getting a contempt citation that would result in my going to jail and/or being dropped for cause as the unpaid agent for Bella Yellow Horn’s pro se defense; I noted to them that they cannot purport to “know” or even reasonably “infer” His Honor’s subjective intentions without considerably more evidence. Indeed, His Honor acted properly and honorably when he asked that Bella Yellow Horn’s Blackfoot Nation Identification, presented to the police officer at the time she was stopped, be entered as evidence; and His Honor acted honorably in allowing us to finally and fully document service of notice of intent to raise Constitutional issues to the Office of the Attorney General of Canada when we represented that we had come to Court believing that such had been done but without our having–as we should have–the requisite documentation.

As Blackfoot, we have every reason to disrespect and distrust the Courts of Canada. It was not long ago, that in and through the Courts of Canada and Alberta, judges, with flowing robes, called “Your Honor”, and attorneys with law degrees and the title “Queen’s Counsel”, gave legal authority and cover to, and/or helped to cover-up, the sterilizing of Native children, using Native children for medical experimentation and the kidnapping of Native children to be taken to Indian Residential Schools where they were subject to forced “de-Indianization”, assimilation and other monstrous crimes. Yet we came and respected the decorum and procedures of the Lethbridge Court as well as the authority and rulings of His Honor. We ask only that we receive the same level of respect and not suffer abusive anger and tones of speech that frankly caused me to get thrown off in some of my direct and cross-examinations and worry about a possible contempt citation.

I ask Mr. Sandstrom, as a Queen’s Counsel and Officer of the Court, in the interest of justice and as I do not have the email addresses of the others, that you please forward this letter to the Presiding Judge, Mr. Falconer, Mr. Brooks and other concerned parties you deem necessary and give notice of intent to have this memorandum entered as part of the official record of the trial.

We invite rebuttal of any and all points of view and issues raised in this letter and stipulate that any rebuttals should accompany this memorandum for the court record. This is not being sent to the Attorney General of Alberta as that office has already stipulated to having been given proper notice of intent to raise constitutional issues but this could be sent to that office as well.

This is not a notice of claim of no jurisdiction of the Provincial Court of Alberta, but rather notice of intent to raise constitutional issues in this case. Indeed, Bella Yellow Horn gave full and specific notice of the types of arguments to be raised in her case as can be seen from the attached letters and materials to the Presiding Magistrate of the Court (received by Mr Scott and Mr. Sandstrom well in advance of the case). Further, a letter of endorsement of our proposed arguments from the National Lawyer’s Guild (see attached) was sent to the Presiding Magistrate to assure his honor that not only did we respect the jurisdiction of the Provincial Court, that also, we did not plan to advance arguments that were frivolous per se. The cited act being violated is the Alberta Motor Vehicles Act–driving without insurance.

First of all, in writing this letter and giving this notice, we do not stipulate in any way that indeed proper notice under the Judicature Act has not been given. Further, since we gave specific arguments that we plan to advance in the Provincial Court at Lethbridge, none of which explicitly challenged the jurisdiction of that Court, how then can we be seen to be challenging the jurisdiction of that Provincial Court? Further, I refer you to the attached submission made by Bella Yellow Horn, dated December 5, 2002 which reads as follows:

I have identified and claimed my Blackfoot Nation Sovereignty to the Canadian immigrants.

I want compensation of $5 million for what has been done in damages to me and my van and my Blackfoot license plate.

Other aboriginal nations have their own license plates, so the Blackfoot Nation can have their own too.

Attached photocopies of fax numbers to which this was sent (1-780-422-6621 on Dec. 5, 2002 at 12:29 pm; 1-613-954-0811 on Dec. 5, 2002 at 12:31 pm) attest that this was sent to and received by the proper authorities. Although this refers primarily to another charge, driving with an unauthorized license plate, for which Bella has already been convicted in absentia according to the Crown Prosecutor Mr. Scott in an ex parte conversation on April 7, 2003 (for failure to show up in court although Bella claims that she did and the courtroom was locked) this charge refers to driving without proper registration and insurance, it is clear, however, from this submission, that these arguments, and possibly others, having constitutional implications, would be advanced even if the charges were somehow separated into separate trials. Further, although Bella’s submission is not as perhaps precise and “elegant” as some attorneys or Eurocentric types might prefer, Bella is the product of the infamous Canadian Indian Residential School system (virtually stipulated to be genocidal in its nature with the creation of the $350 million “Healing Fund” by the Canadian Government) that left her not only brutalized and poor, but also without the formal “education” or legal preparation to submit the types of formal and esoteric presentations that attorney’s might find “consistent” with proper form of submission under the Judicature and other Canadian Acts. Still I would argue that her arguments are elegant and profound despite–or perhaps because of–their apparent simplicity.

Also in his brief on the constitutional issues, which I obtained only on April 7th upon arriving at the Blackfoot Reservation at Brocket (a day before trial on April 8th) Mr. Kurt J.W. Sandstrom noted that: “The Attorney General accepts the letter of February 2, 2003 from James M. Craven on Yellowhorn as notice of a challenge to the Court’s jurisdiction under section 24(1) of the Judicature Act. Similarly, the letter of Mr. Many Bears, dated March 28, 2002 is accepted as similar notice. The Attorney General of Alberta will notify Canada to determine whether official notice will be required on these cases, and will provide copies of the aforementioned letters to Canada.” Other than the fact that Mr. Sandstrom has mischaracterized Bella Yellow Horn’s position with respect to jurisdiction of the Court, this seems to suggest that my letter, acting as an unpaid agent of the pro se defense of Bella Yellow Horn, was accepted as notice of intent to challenge Court jurisdiction, a mischaracterization, yet it also alludes to the specifics of my letter to the Court, plus our attached “Indictment of the U.S. and Canadian Governments for Genocide”, giving notice that we would be advancing Constitutional arguments in a Court whose jurisdiction the prosecution has summarily claimed we have challenged or would challenge.

Further, I must note for the record, that in an ex parte conversation with Mr. Sandstrom, during a Court recess, when I asked Mr. Sandstrom if he had read the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide to which Canada became a final signatory in 1953 (and thus it became part of the Supreme Law of Canada) he responded to my question: “some”. When I asked if he had read our attached Indictment of the U.S. and Canadian Governments for Genocide, attached with the letter to the Presiding Magistrate in the case, Mr. Sandstrom also responded “some” and indicated he will read all of it and may have to make an amended brief. Yet Mr. Sandstrom came to Court, along with Mr. Scott, with a fully-prepared brief on constitutional issues while arguing that proper notice of potential constitutional issues to be raised was not given. In addition to the prejudicial effects of tying Mr. Many Bears’ case with that of Bella Yellow Horn, we also asked that the cases not be tied together as Bella Yellow Horn was not advancing the same types of arguments that Mr. Many Bears appeared to be advancing with respect to jurisdiction of the court. Indeed we can imagine many circumstances in which Canadian courts have jurisdiction over Indigenous or foreign nationals residing in or committing offenses in Canadian territory.

In any case, pursuant to, and out of respect for, the order and jurisdiction of the Provincial Court in Lethbridge, and the time allotted to make this submission, this is to be taken as formal notice of intent to raise constitutional issues in this case of Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Alberta v Bella Yellow Horn, s. 71(1)(a) MVA pursuant to provisions of the Judicature Act, R.S.A. 2000, c. J-2, Section 24(1) and any other required provisions relevant to this case and the advancement of constitutional issues in this case. The specific arguments to be advanced have already been presented and are presented in the attached materials with this letter. Some of the proposed arguments include–but are not limited to:

1) The Indian Act is genocidal per se and causes forced assimilation and other deleterious conditions and relationships that violate the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide and other Covenants and Treaties of International Law to which Canada is a signatory and are thus part of the Supreme Law of Canada under the Canadian Constitution; therefore any purported duties and obligations of Indigenous Peoples under the Indian Act are made illegal by those aspects of the Supreme Law of Canada with which they are in direct violation or contradiction; asking any First Nations person to recognize and submit to the Indian Act in Canada is precisely analogous to asking a Jewish person or persons from other targeted groups to recognize and submit to the infamous 1935 “Nuremberg Laws” of Nazi Germany in the opinion of many recognized scholars on First Nations issues in Canada.

2) Mr. Sandstrom’s brief notes that: “The Provincial Court clearly has jurisdiction over the accused. Aboriginal persons, like Canadian citizens, are bound by the laws of Canada. This is the case whether an individual is part of a group that has entered into a treaty with the Crown or not.” and: “Aboriginal persons, like others residing in Canada, are entitled to the benefit and protection of Canadian law. They are at the same time expected to obey Canadian law.” We know of many cases in which obedience to a lower-level law puts one in conflict with higher law: someone breaking speeding laws in order to stop a murder for example. In this case, we argue that Bella Yellow Horn was objectively acting as an agent and instrument to expose and stop genocide and thus cause obedience to the Supreme Law of Canada prohibiting the acts or cover-up associated with genocide. No person may be compelled to obey laws that are inherently discriminatory, that conflict with higher laws or that objectively promote their own extermination and that of their People;

3) Any purported obligations of Blackfoot under Treaty 7 that serve to denationalize or cause Blackfoot to surrender to all laws and authority of the Crown are contradictory and in violation of international law and those aspects of the Canadian Constitution dealing with genocide. Only sovereign nations may sign treaties and according to the Vienna Convention on Treaties, which the U.S. and Canadian Supreme Courts have recognized as definitive international law on treaties, each treating partner recognizes–or at least does not call into question–the authority, co-equal status and systems for determining government/leadership of the other. The cited language of Treaty 7, dealing with Blackfoot allegedly agreeing to become loyal subjects of Her Majesty the Queen and all of her laws, if accepted, would mean that Blackfoot, as a sovereign nation, would be signing a treaty whose terms and language served to extinguish the very sovereign nation that had the authority and standing to sign–and continue–such a treaty; no nation, especially Blackfoot, would ever sign such a treaty that would be illegal and non-binding under international law and basic contract law. These asserted obligations under Treaty 7, along with Treaty 7 itself, are simply not valid under even Canadian Law. Further, Treaty 7 was not fully and finally ratified by the Crown in London as required prior to 1947. Further, according to the notes of Father Constantine Scullen, representative of the Crown to attest to the signatures of the Blackfoot Chiefs on Treaty 7, none of the Chiefs would make a mark with their own hand nor would they even touch the pen used to make the mark and therefore Treaty 7 and any purported allegiances or obligations of Indigenous Peoples under Treaty 7 would not exist, eventhough the Government of Canada has asserted Treaty 7 to be binding and has built a whole system of “private” property, interests and purported property rights under its provisions.

4) The very same laws, including the Indian Act that have brought Blackfoot to conditions of abject poverty (average $229 Canadian per month in income)on wide-open Reserves, with no businesses or mass transportation systems, are also alleged to mandate that Blackfoot carry auto insurance often costing up to $1200 Canadian per year; in this context, carrying auto insurance is prohibitive and not driving means leaving oneself subject to conditions of life that violate Articles II (a),(b), (c), and (e) of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide–part of the Supreme Law of Canada. Bella Yellow Horn, like many First Nations persons, was therefore forced by Canada’s own laws to violate lower-level laws in order to survive and in order to uphold higher laws.

We trust that his shall constitute sufficient notice under the provisions of the Judicature Act as we have made a good-faith attempt to comply with its provisions and the order of the Provincial Court in Lethbridge, Alberta.

Dear Hon. Presiding Judge:I am writing on behalf of the National Lawyers Guild – Michigan Chapter in the matter of Bella Yellowhorn and to respectfully urge her acquittal on the charges after an impartial review of the facts in her case.

The National Lawyers Guild is a progressive legal organization working towards the end that “human rights shall be regarded as more sacred than property interests.” We are the oldest integrated bar association in the United States and are affiliated with the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Our chapter is one of the oldest and largest chapters in the United States with over 300 members throughout Michigan.

We have been informed of the facts of Bella Yellowhorn’s case and believe that her good-faith beliefs are supported under international law. Specifically, we endorse and adopt the arguments of Professor Jim Craven, a recognized expert concerning the rights of Native Americans, summarized as follows:

a) The Blackfoot Nation is real and viable and still in existence despite past and present attempts at its extermination;

b) Bella Yellowhorn is a member of the Blackfoot Nation;

c) The existence or non-existence of any nation should not be found dependent upon recognition or non-recognition by other nations (particularly those such as Canada or the U.S. who have a long history of genocide and acting in denial of the sovereignty of First Nations);

d) The sovereignty of indigenous people’s cannot be legitimately denied;

e) The Government of Canada does assert Treaty 7, signed with Blackfoot chiefs, to be binding and has built a whole system of supposed property rights and material interests upon that and other Treaties.

f) The 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, recognized by both the U.S. and Canadian Supreme Courts as the “definitive international law on treaties and treaty relations”, only sovereign nations can sign treaties and in doing so, each party necessarily recognizes the other treating party as a co-equal and legitimate representative of a whole People being bound by that Treaty.

g) Canada is not only bound by international law governing acceptance and recognition of treating partners as sovereign and co-equal nations, it is also bound by other specifics of the Vienna Convention on Treaties: e.g. Article 27 which stipulates that no nation may invoke provisions of its internal or national laws as a reason-or in order-not to abide by treaty specifics and obligations;

h) Canada is also a signatory to the 1948 UN Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (ratified in 1953) which, in Article II(e), defines, as one form or instrument of genocide (NOTE: ANY of the five instruments of genocide mentioned in Article II constitute genocide in whole), the forcible transferring of children [or any persons] from one group to another group; this includes any form of forced assimilation including forced citizenship(also recognized as illegal in the Helsinki Accords on Human Rights to which Canada is also a signatory). According to the Constitution of Canada, these Conventions and Accords, having the status of treaties, constitute part of the “Supreme Law” of Canada (which is why the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide supercedes the more narrow law-and more narrow definition of genocide-in the Criminal Code of Canada dealing with genocide);

i) The Government of Canada, through the creation of the so-called “Healing Fund” for compensation of victims of the Canadian Residential Schools (instruments of forced assimilation, forced religious conversion, forced sterilization, deliberate inflicting of serious mental and bodily harm, sexual and physical abuse etc) has already stipulated to the reality and fact of ongoing genocide against First Nations Peoples-including Blackfoot-as defined in Articles II (b), (c), (d) and (e) of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide; these crimes occurred under and through the Indian Act and the non-Blackfoot political entities (Tribal Councils) imposed upon the Blackfoot by the Government of Canada;

j) Any governmental or judicial decision predicated upon the assumptions of the non-existence of a Blackfoot Nation and the enforced Canadian citizenship (and citizenship obligations) of Blackfoot as mere “national minorities” involves, at least, complicity in genocide and/or cover-up of genocide (which itself is a form of complicity in genocide) and as such is in violation of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide and the Helsinki Accords and thus is in violation of the “Supreme Law” of Canada;

k) Bella Yellowhorn, in her own mind, with some substantial legal scholarship supporting her beliefs, believed/believes that: 1) There still survives a sovereign Blackfoot Nation with its own traditional laws, government and institutions and that she is a member of that Nation; 2) Asserting the fact, existence and viability of the Blackfoot Nation-along with asserting the derivative rights of that Nation to sovereignty, independence, self-determination and freedom from extermination-is essential to preventing the total extermination of what is left of the Blackfoot Nation and therefore her intent and actions are consistent with Canada’s treaty obligations to prevent and punish the crimes of genocide; 3) Her status driving on non-Blackfoot lands, was no different (in international law and in intent) than someone from another nation or state of another nation (e.g. Montana) with non-Alberta license plates and/or non-Alberta insurance driving through Alberta or anywhere in Canada; 4) She was fully insured in the only way that anyone is really insured-their honor and integrity; after 9-11 many insurance companies refused to pay-out on obligations such that the nominally “insured”-and any victims in need of compensation as a result of actions by the insured-were never really insured at all (and indeed many victims of the “insured” had more to fear from the insurance companies driven by profit motives than from those individuals whose actions required compensation for the victims); it is for these reasons that Blackfoot regard the integrity and honor of the person causing damages as the only real form of “insurance” one can carry and in that sense, Bella Yellowhorn was fully insured in Blackfoot terms;

Thank you for your consideration of these issues.
Sincerely,

John C. Philo
Chapter President

Dear Sisters and Brothers,

It is the tradition among Blackfoot to send an offering of tobacco, as it is tradition among some Indigenous Nations to send an eagle feather or other sacred items, as a call for all Warriors and People of Conscience to join us in a Just Cause. Our cause is to stop the ongoing extermination of Blackfoot and other Indigenous Peoples as we are at a critical crossroads of our history–literally between our survival and extinction. We do not seek assistance for narrow parochial interests. We stand with and ready to assist, to the best of our ability, any oppressed Peoples anywhere.

We will be going to Court in Alberta on April 8, 2003. The case of Bella Yellowhorn, a member of the Blackfoot Nation and its Traditional Government, involves a charge of driving without Alberta insurance and driving with “Sovereign Blackfoot Nation” license plates on her van (now missing from impound). This case is really about the existence, sovereignty, survival, standing (under international law) and reality of the Blackfoot Nation standing against genocidal onslaughts, attempts at extermination, summary non-recognition (without authority in law) and statistical elimination (through non-Blackfoot impositions of their genocidal criteria of “official status” to determine who and what is a First Nations person as well as which are and which are not “recognized” First Nations).

Those who have specialized or general expertise in the areas dealt with in the accompanying letter to the Provincial Court of Alberta or the Indictment of the Governments of the U.S. and Canada for Genocide Against Blackfoot Peoples (found athttp://www.chgs.umn.edu/ under the section “Histories, Narratives and Documents”) are asked to please read both the letter and accompanying indictment, and, if anyone can so honestly attest, that the arguments and allegations contained in those documents are compelling (legally, logically, empirical support, morally etc) or at least serious and not frivolous and thus worthy of full consideration and examination of supporting evidence supporting them, please so attest and send letters to jcraven@clark.edu before April 1, 2003. Please also attach name, titles and positions (past and/or present) as these letters will be introduced in support of our case and Cause in the Alberta Court.

We are headed for the Supreme Court of Canada and eventually to the International Court in the Hague and the U.N. to establish evidence and arguments related to the reality of ongoing genocide against Indigenous Peoples in many places and the reality–and basis in international law–of the existence of fully-sovereign Indigenous Nations and their derivative rights to freedom, independence, self-determination and freedom of extermination.

Thank you all for any assistance. Time is of the essence so any and all submissions are appreciated and needed ASAP. Please also forward this request to others who might be of assistance.

Sincerely,

James Craven
Omahkohkiaayo-i-poyi
Member and Designated Special Prosecutor and Solicitor General, Blackfoot Nation Professor of Economics

Your letter of February 3, 2003 addressed to the Presiding Majistrate was copied and provided by this court to Ms. Yellowhorn and to the Crown Prosecutor’s Office. The trial of this matter is now scheduled for 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday, April 8th, 2003 in Courtroom #1 in Lethbridge, Alberta.

From your covering letter, you indicated that you might be willing and able to travel to Lethbridge in order to assist Ms. Yellowhorn if the trial was after March 23rd. The trial date was set with that accomodation in mind. Please understand, hoever, that is is Ms. Yellowhorn, as opposed to the Crown or the Court that is seeking your assistance. Any expenses or costs associated with your travel to or attendance in Court in Lethbridge will not be the responsibility of Alberta Justice or the Provincial court of Alberta.

My name is James Michael Craven. I am a member of the Blackfoot Nation and a Professor of Economics and Chairman of the Business Division at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington, USA. I have been asked to testify by Bella Yellowhorn in her “pro se” defense in her case before your Court. First of all, I must note that Bella Yellowhorn has attempted to secure legal Counsel of her own choosing but has been unable to do so as various inquiries by her to secure legal Counsel have resulted in no one willing to take her case; perhaps they fear being “tainted” in future cases in Alberta as a result of taking her case and/or being associated with her apparent cause.

I am an economist by training, with a focus on international economics, and my training has also involved formal and informal training in international law over some thirty years; I am not, however, an attorney. I have published extensively on issues in international law-particularly with reference to status and rights of Indian nations under international law-in peer-reviewed journals that included positive assessments by recognized professors of international law at various universities. My standing as an economist and educator is possibly reflected in my being invited into–which I never sought — Marquis “Who’s Who in: The World; America; the West; Science and Engineering; Finance and Industry”; I have been a biographical subject in these publications for many years.

The possible probative value of my testimony has to do with the issue of “mens rea” and the mind-set and good-faith-based beliefs upon which Bella Yellowhorn was operating at the time of her alleged offenses. Specifically, Bella Yellowhorn operates-and was likely operating, at the time of her alleged offenses-with the following good-faith-based beliefs for which she has considerable support by recognized scholars of international law:

a) That there is indeed a real and viable Blackfoot Nation still in existence despite past and present attempts at its extermination or elimination and that Bella Yellowhorn is indeed a member of that Nation;

b) That the existence or non-existence of any nation is not in any way dependent upon recognition or non-recognition by other recognized nations (particularly those such as Canada or the U.S. that have acquired and built material interests in denying the existence and legitimacy-and derivative rights of independence, self-determination and sovereignty-of First Nations and/or other nations; the existence, legitimacy-and derivative rights-of all nations are a matter of “facts on the ground” and international law as were it not so, any nation could summarily extinguish another nation (genocide) through simple non-recognition and applied power disparities;

c) Of the 193 nations in the U.N. over 100 have been recognized as nations only since 1945 and out of the dissolution of the former USSR, for example, fifteen new nations have been recognized by Canada and the U.S.; these new nations did not “become” nations since the dissolution of the U.S.S.R , rather they simply became recognized as nations as the essential elements and requisites of their nationhood existed long before their recognition as nations by other nations (prior to their recognition as nations, they were summarily declared to be “national minorities” or “dependent captive quasi-nations” with “quasi-sovereignty” and having the same formal status as First Nations have been summarily declared to have in Canada and the U.S.);

d)Although some Blackfoot deny that Treaty 7 was actually signed by the principal chiefs of the Blackfoot, the Government of Canada does assert Treaty 7 to be binding and has built a whole system of supposed property rights and material interests upon that and other Treaties. According to the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, recognized by both the U.S. and Canadian Supreme Courts as the “definitive international law on treaties and treaty relations”, only sovereign nations can sign treaties and in doing so, each party explicitly and tacitly recognizes the other treating party as a co-equal and legitimate representative of a whole People being bound by that Treaty. In recognizing the legitimacy of a treating party, each party is also tacitly, if not explicitly, recognizing-or not calling into question-the legitimacy of the mechanisms and institutions through which the representatives and government of the treating parties were selected and the traditional Blackfoot mechanisms and institutions through which the alleged Blackfoot Chiefs and signatories of Treaty 7 were selected remain in force among traditional Blackfoot despite any impositions of alternative political forms (Tribal Councils) under the Indian Act;

e) Canada is not only bound by international law governing acceptance and recognition of treating partners as sovereign and co-equal nations, it is also bound by other specifics of the Vienna Convention on Treaties: e.g. Article 27 which stipulates that no nation may invoke provisions of its internal or national laws as a reason-or in order-not to abide by treaty specifics and obligations;

f) Canada is also a signatory to the 1948 UN Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (ratified in 1953) which, in Article II(e), defines, as one form or instrument of genocide (NOTE: ANY of the five instruments of genocide mentioned in Article II constitute genocide in whole), the forcible transferring of children [or any persons] from one group to another group; this includes any form of forced assimilation including forced citizenship(also recognized as illegal in the Helsinki Accords on Human Rights to which Canada is also a signatory). According to the Constitution of Canada, these Conventions and Accords, having the status of treaties, constitute part of the “Supreme Law” of Canada (which is why the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide supercedes the more narrow law-and more narrow definition of genocide-in the Criminal Code of Canada dealing with genocide);

g) The Government of Canada, through the creation of the so-called “Healing Fund” for compensation of victims of the Canadian Residential Schools (instruments of forced assimilation, forced religious conversion, forced sterilization, deliberate inflicting of serious mental and bodily harm, sexual and physical abuse etc) has already stipulated to the reality and fact of ongoing genocide against First Nations Peoples-including Blackfoot-as defined in Articles II (b), (c), (d) and (e) of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide; these crimes occurred under and through the Indian Act and the non-Blackfoot political entities (Tribal Councils) imposed upon the Blackfoot by the Government of Canada;

h) Any governmental or judicial decision predicated upon the assumptions of the non-existence of a Blackfoot Nation and the enforced Canadian citizenship (and citizenship obligations) of Blackfoot as mere “national minorities” involves, at least, complicity in genocide and/or cover-up of genocide (which itself is a form of complicity in genocide) and as such is in violation of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide and the Helsinki Accords and thus is in violation of the “Supreme Law” of Canada;

i) If there is no Sovereign Blackfoot Nation, with its own traditional mechanisms and institutions for forming a government, determining its own internal affairs and relations with other nations then either: 1) There is no binding Treaty 7 as those Blackfoot who ostensibly signed it had no standing or authority to do so; or, 2) there was a Blackfoot Nation and traditional government that signed Treaty 7 but it no longer exists (then the Government and certain segments of the population of Canada are guilty of genocide); or, 3) There is some kind of Blackfoot Nation sui generis that has limited sovereignty and imposed/non-Blackfoot governmental structures summarily imposed by a Canadian government and private interests having direct material interests-and no legal authority in international law-in doing so;

j) Bella Yellowhorn, in her own mind, with some substantial legal scholarship supporting her beliefs, believed/believes that: 1) There still survives a sovereign Blackfoot Nation with its own traditional laws, government and institutions and that she is a member of that Nation; 2) Asserting the fact, existence and viability of the Blackfoot Nation-along with asserting the derivative rights of that Nation to sovereignty, independence, self-determination and freedom from extermination-is essential to preventing the total extermination of what is left of the Blackfoot Nation and therefore her intent and actions are consistent with Canada’s treaty obligations to prevent and punish the crimes of genocide; 3) Her status driving on non-Blackfoot lands, was no different (in international law and in intent) than someone from another nation or state of another nation (e.g. Montana) with non-Alberta license plates and/or non-Alberta insurance driving through Alberta or anywhere in Canada; d) She was fully insured in the only way that anyone is really insured-their honor and integrity; after 9-11 many insurance companies refused to pay-out on obligations such that the nominally “insured”-and any victims in need of compensation as a result of actions by the insured-were never really insured at all (and indeed many victims of the “insured” had more to fear from the insurance companies driven by profit motives than from those individuals whose actions required compensation for the victims); it is for these reasons that Blackfoot regard the integrity and honor of the person causing damages as the only real form of “insurance” one can carry and in that sense, Bella Yellowhorn was fully insured in Blackfoot terms;

These are but some of the arguments that I was asked to advance. I respectfully ask Your Honor to please read the accompanying “Indictment of the U.S. and Canadian Governments for Genocide” for supporting authority in international law for some of the arguments advanced in this letter. As I am a teacher and it is difficult and costly for me to come to Alberta to testify or to assist Bella Yellowhorn in her pro se defense, I would ask that a firm date for trial be given and kept in the interest of justice. I am teaching until March 23 but can get off to travel with sufficient notice and a firm trial date.

Thank you for your consideration of these issues.

Sincerely,
James M. Craven
Omahkohkiaayo-i’poyi
Member,Blackfoot Nation
Professor of Economics and Business Division Chairman
Clark College

Premises in Alberta Court Case

Premise 1: Treaties are covenants between sovereign nations and only sovereign nations can ratify and keep treaty terms (Vienna Convention on Treaties, Articles 27 and 29);

Premise 2: No nation may summarily and legitimately deny to another nation any of the same rights, principles and legal authorities that it asserts for itself to assert, defend and legitimate its own existence and derivative rights to sovereignty, freedom and self-determination (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; UN Charter)

Premise 3: Each treating nation is recognizing–or at least not calling into question–the existence, sovereignty, government, systems of selecting members of government–and authority to bind whole populations to terms of the treaty–of the other treating partner when forming and ratifying a treaty;

Premise 4: No treaty is valid that contains within it, terms effectively abolishing the other treating partner as a sovereign nation–as national sovereignty, freedom, independence and self-determination are requisite to having legal authority and standing to ratify and keep treaties and treaty terms;

Premise 5: No nation may legally or legitimately contrive or invoke domestic laws to circumvent or breach treaty terms once ratified ( international canons of treaty construction on supremacy clauses designed to make treaty terms complied with and binding and not breachable through ruses and contrived domestic laws);

Premise 6: The existence or non-existence of any group of people is strictly determined by facts on the ground and tests under international law and is in no way dependent upon recognition or non-recognition of existence by any other nation or entity; were it not so, one nation could simply abolish or exterminate another through redefinition and non-recognition;

Premise 7: Calculated breaches of treaty terms by one or more treating partners make a given treaty null and void;

Premise 8: No treaty may be considered legitimate without full, free and fully-informed consent on all aspects of the treaty on the part of the treating partners and without all treating partners being free of fraud, duress, unconscionability, threats and calculated deception;

Premise 9: No person may be deprived of nationality without legal cause nor may any person have nationality assigned without voluntary, free and informed consent of the person;

Premise 10: No nation may assert national laws/sovereignty to commit genocide or other breaches international law since domestic actions often have spillover effects on other nations as well as on human beings with fundamental rights under international law; for the same reasons that provincial laws trump municipal laws (to preserve cohesion and integrity of a whole province), and federal laws trump provincial laws (to preserve the cohesion and integrity of a federal union and system), so international law trumps federal law (to preserve the cohesion and integrity of a global community of nations and peoples).

Premise 11: No need to cover-up what is clean only what is dirty; acts of cover-up may be used to legally infer and establish mens rea (criminal intent), existence of conspiracies and awareness of probable or inexorable effects of given policies, common plans and actions; court procedures and protocols may be used and are often used as instruments of genocide and cover-up of genocide;

Premise 12: As court systems and evolving law (statutes, administrative codes, case law and precedents) are often used to set up, carry out and cover-up genocide, they are also used to ratify and legitimate genocide such that they become tautological and abrogate or impeach themselves as legal instruments available to those who set them up and have been charged with genocide; e.g. would a Jew going to a nazi court expect anything else but that nazi laws and precedents had been consciously set up not only to facilitate and cover-up genocide, but to ratify and legitimate it when challenged?

Premise 13: No government or entities set up by an illegal, occupying and genocidal power may ever be taken to be legal and legitimate representatives or legitimate governments of the occupied peoples and victims; for the same reasons under law and reason that the puppet Vichy Government set up by nazi occupation forces in France could have never been considered a legal and legitimate representative of the people of France, the Tribal Councils set up under the Indian Act can never be legally or legitimately taken to be representatives of the Blackfoot People and Nation;

Premise 14: The Indian Act and Treaty 7 are internally contradictory and self-impeaching: they set up supposed special powers for the “protections” of a delinated and special group (Indians) not set up for other groups, yet also set up powers from which this targeted group need protection for their continued existence and survival;

Premise 15: Intentions of persons or groups of persons may be legally inferred and established from the highly probable–or inexorable–and foreseeable effects (by a reasonable and prudent person free of bias, malice or conflict of interest) of given policies, laws and actions without necessary resort to tape recordings, insider documents, informants etc giving actual utterances revealing intentions;

Premise 16: No nation and treating partner may summarily, unilaterally, ex post facto and without the consent of the other treating partner(s), declare a treaty to be sui generis as a means to circumvent their own treaty responsibilities and the rights of the other treating partner and/or in order to inhibit or proscribe the coverage and rights under international law of other treating partner, or the treaty;

Premise 17: No nation may summarily declare members of a nation to be citizens of another nation , or claim that imposed citizenship now renders a given a given group a “national minority” and not governed or protected by international law ; nor may any nation use forced citizenship as a means to claim the offending nation is not subject to international law or international conventions–especially those ratified by the offending nation.

Premise 18: Signing and ratifying a treaty signals intent to keep the terms of the treaty–and thus bind whole populations–into the future; keeping the terms of a treaty into the future, requires the continued existence, legitimacy (de facto and de jure) sovereignty, freedom, self-determination and nationhood of the treating partners and continued recognition–or at least not callling into question–of same by the treating partners;
Jim C.

A Piikani reserve woman who believes she is not bound by Canadian law is fighting for the right to drive in the province without registering her vehicle.

Bella Yellowhorn has launched a constitutional challenge of the Indian Act and Treaty 7 in an effort to be recognized as part of a sovereign nation.

“I am a member of the sovereign Blackfoot Nation”, said Yellowhorn. “I do not have to abide by the Canadian status laws and all they charge us for.”

Yellowhorn claims she is one of a growing number of natives who have rejected their status Indian cards from the government and are using their own Blackfoot Nation cards.

Yellowhorn and her representation–James Craven, a professor at Clark’s[sic] College in Washington–will argue their position this morning in Lethbridge provincial court.
Prosecutor Kurt Sandstrom, a specialist in constitutional and aboriginal law, is handling the case for the Crown.

The issue stems back to May 1, 2001 when Yellowhorn was pulled over in Lethbridge for not having proper registration for her vehicle. Yellowhorn had outfitted her van with a homemade Blackfoot Nation license plate.

“This is traditional Blackfoot Nation territory”, she said. “This is my homeland and I feel I have the right to use my own license plate in my home country.”

If her case is successful, Yellowhorn wants to be able to use her own license plate on all ancestral Blackfoot lands, which encompasses most of southern Alberta, stretching into Montana, Saskatchewan and B.C.

Craven, however, says the issue goes far beyond license plates.

“What this is about is genocide, pure and simple,” he said. “It’s about the right to be a free nation, free people. We have a right to remain as a nation and not be exterminated.”

Craven,, who also goes by his Blackfoot name Omahkohkiaayo-i’poyi, said he plans to shed light on the Indian Act’s purpose of forcing assimilation of Indians into Canadian life–what he calls genocide of the Blackfoot culture.

“If a (Blackfoot Indian) chooses also to be a Canadian that’s fine but you can’t force it on us,” he said. “We’re forcing Canada to look at itself and what’s being done to Indians across the country.”

Craven said he’ll take the issue to the Supreme Court of Canada or even the International Court in Hague or United Nations if necessary.

Forcing Blackfoot Nations[sic] Natives to have Canadian insurance on their vehicles is akin to asking foreign travellers to buy Canadian insurance to visit here, says a professor helping]

By Lisa Doerksen
Lethbridge Herald

Forcing Blackfoot Nations[sic] natives to have Canadian insurance on their vehicles is akin to asking foreign travellers to buy Canadian insurance to visit here, says a professor helping a native woman fight a charge of driving a motor vehicle without insurance.

“It’s no different than a motorist from Montana driving onto Canadian lands,” said James Craven, a professor at Washington’s Clark College, on behalf of Bella Yellowhorn Friday at the Lethbridge provincial courthouse. “They’re not required to have Canadian insurance as long as they have some kind of insurance.”

The issue stems back to May 1, 2001 when Yellowhorn, a Piikani reserve resident, was pulled over in Lethbridge for not having proper registration for her vehicle. Yellowhorn had outfitted her van with a homemade Blackfoot Nation licence plate.

She was later convicted of a charge of not having proper registration and the insurance charge went to trial this week.

Yellowhorn claimed in court she had insurance but could not prove it because she was unable to obtain documents from her van when it was seized and also could not locate the Fort Macleod office she purchased the insurance from.

Prosecutor Eric Brooks, who is handling the criminal prosecution regarding the charge, noted the onus is on the accused to provide proof of insurance and Yellowhorn was allowed several adjournments to give her time to gather the information.

Judge Ron Jacobson will hand down his decision on Feb. 9.

Yellowhorn said if the case is successful, she wants to be able to use her own licence plate on all ancestral Blackfoot lands, which encompasses most of southern Alberta, stretching into Montana, Saskatchewan and B.C.

In addition to fighting the charge, Craven has launched a constitutional challenge of the Indian Act and Treaty 7 in an effort to have the Blackfoot people recognized as a sovereign nation.

Craven told the court Friday the Blackfoot people meet all the tests for a nation under international law, including a stable population, identifiable land and their own identifiable governance.

The Indian Act, he said, is little more than a document designed to force the assimilation of natives into Canadian culture–something he calls genocide of the Blackfoot culture.

“Bella believes that as a matter of her own personal survival she cannot and will not obey any of the (conditions) of the Indian Act,” said Craven.

He argued the Indian Act allows activity prohibited under international genocide laws, pointing to issues such as residential schools and the high rate of suicide on the reserve.

However, Crown prosecutor Kurt Sandstrom argued that many of the issues raised by Craven have little to do with the matter before the court–a provincial statute requiring proper insurance to drive in Alberta.

Alberta’s provincial court is not the right place to launch arguments based on international law, said Sandstrom, a specialist in constitutional and aboriginal law handling the constitutional challenge. “This court does not have the authority to impose a remedy under the international forum.”

Reprinted under the FAIR USE Doctrine for educational purposes only and not to be used for any commercial uses.

The provincial government has ordered Merle Good Eye to quit harvesting trees from West Sharples Creek in the Porcupine Hills west of Claresholm.

He maintains it is his right as a member of the Blackfoot Nation.

And in spite of a stop-work order from Alberta Sustainable Resource Development and notices tacked to fallen logs indicating they are being seized by government, Good Eye says he plans to continue the harvest he started about two weeks ago.

“It is our right to take these logs,” Good Eye said Thursday. “I have a permit from the proper authorities to harvest.” His permission comes, he says, from the hereditary chiefs of the Blackfoot Nation and from band council.

“I’m being told by my elders and proper authority that this is ours; we can’t have foreigners coming onto Blackfoot territory and telling me what to do.”

The issue goes deeper than the argument over who can harvest timber on Crown land.It goes to the root of animosity between native people and government — who determines land and access rights.

James Craven, an economics professor from Clark College in Washington and a Blackfoot, said plans are in place to take legal action against the Canadian and U.S. governments for the commission of international crimes and crimes against Blackfoot law under the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide.

Craven maintains the federal governments and their agents in Canada and the U.S. committed genocide by killing members of the First Nations, causing serious bodily and mental harm through daily assaults and the establishment of residential schools and unlawful sterilization of native people.

“The Blackfoot and other Treaty 7 Nations never surrendered their lands, and the governments and citizens of Canada and Alberta are currently illegally occupying Blackfoot territory,” said Craven.

“We are going to stand. We do not seek anyone’s permission to exist as a people. This is Blackfoot land and these are Blackfoot ways.”Details of the legal action can be found on the Internet at http://www.chgs.umn.edu/ under “Documents, Narratives and Histories”.

Good Eye and his employees risk fines and arrest if they continue to harvest timber after the stop-work order was issued.

A spokesman with Sustainable Resource Development says an investigation is underway and if they refuse to stop, police may intervene and remove them from the area.

Susan McManus says the proper process to obtain a logging permit is outlined in the Forest Act.”There is an annual timber sale,” said McManus. The sale is advertised, and the department contacts directly sawmills and reserves and communities throughout the province.

“They bid on an auction of land with a sealed tender. They also put in a damage deposit which can go up to as high as $2,000 which is returned if there is proper cleanup and reforestation.” Good Eye didn’t follow that process. He says he is a skilled logger and plans to clean up and collect cones from the area to grow into saplings for planting next spring

“I’ve logged just about everywhere,” said Good Eye.”I’ve logged at Westcastle and Alison Creek and I’ve never had problems before.”I don’t know what the problem is. Maybe these logs are too good, maybe they’re saving them for someone else.”

Good Eye said he’s been logging since he was a child when he worked for his stepfather harvesting logs with horse-drawn equipment. Good Eye said he plans to sell some of the logs and use the others to construct homes on the reserve where as many as five and six families are living together because of insufficient housing.

Lawyer challenges the legitimacy of Canadian law over First Nations
Submitted by eisengrimm on Mon, 04/26/2004 – 23:18. CanadaIndigenous

Natives not bound by laws of Canada, lawyer arguesAn Ottawa lawyer is challenging the authority of Canadian governments to apply laws to native people.

Jake Rupert, The Ottawa Citizen, April 25, 2004

A judge has agreed to hear a claim that sovereignty over Canadian lands was never fairly transferred in any of the ways recognized by international law. Jake Rupert reports on Michael Swinwood’s effort to change Canadian history.

It’s an issue that has been debated for years in native and legal academic circles but hasn’t been answered by Canadian courts, say aboriginal law experts.But it looks like the question will have to be answered soon, after lawyer Michael Swinwood, on behalf of two natives in North Bay charged with fraud, filed a constitutional challenge to the Crown’s right to apply the Criminal Code, or any other law, to aboriginal people, and a judge agreed to hear it.

Mr. Swinwood says aboriginal people never ceded sovereignty to British or Canadian governments in accordance with recognized international standards such as conquest or purchase.

To have jurisdiction over people who occupied land first, according to law, sovereignty must be properly handed over, Mr. Swinwood says in documents filed in court. It wasn’t, so Canadian governments have no right to enforce their laws on natives, the documents say.”The federal government lacks proper legislative authority in the territory it is alleged these illegal acts took place,” Mr. Swinwood argues.

“No treaty has been entered into … therefore the federal government has no jurisdiction in the territory where these acts are alleged.”

Mr. Swinwood will ask a judge to “nullify the application” of Canadian laws against natives because, he says, according to the current state of the law, Canada’s laws have “no force or effect as against these Indian persons or any other Indian person.”

Earlier this year in North Bay, Mr. Swinwood convinced Ontario Superior Court Justice J.S. O’Neill, himself an expert in native law, to hear the challenge and order the government to pay for it.Judge O’Neill found Mr. Swinwood raised “important” legal questions that need answering and ordered the provincial government to give Mr. Swinwood $35,000 in order to argue the case properly.”

The issues raised … are of sufficient merit that it would be contrary to the interests of justice for the opportunity to pursue these questions and these issues … to be forfeited if legal funding is not provided,” the judge wrote in his reasons for granting Mr. Swinwood the money.”It is to be remembered that the legal community in Canada is only beginning to come to grips with issues involving aboriginal title and rights,” Judge O’Neill said.

After getting the funding order in March, Mr. Swinwood hoped to make his case this spring in front of Judge O’Neill, but the Crown appealed the judge’s ruling on the funding application, arguing that the judge should not have granted the money because there is no merit to Mr. Swinwood’s assertions.No date has been set for the appeal, but Mr. Swinwood has decided to press ahead with the constitutional challenge, which he’ll pay for out of his own pocket and with money collected from native organizations.

In other cases involving native clients charged with crimes, Mr. Swinwood tried and failed to have judges agree to hear the constitutional challenge.Now that a judge has agreed to hear it, the matter is just too important to walk away from over money, Mr. Swinwood said.”Like Justice O’Neill said, it’s been a long time coming, so it feels good that we’re finally getting to table some of our issues,” he said.”The Indians got messed over here in this part of the world pretty badly, and it’s time some one should speak for them. On this issue, it just happens to be me.”Those who say that Canadian laws are applicable against Indians in this country don’t know their history. We’re just pointing this out.”

If Mr. Swinwood’s first argument fails, he has another, darker allegation that he says strips the Crown of its ability to apply its laws to natives.According to his application documents: “The legislature of Canada and Her majesty the Queen deprive themselves of legislative authority by being complicit in the crime of genocide against the Indian Nation … and have acted and continue to act contrary to their international obligations codified in the convention for the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide.”

At the very least, he’s asking the judge to find that a 1704 royal proclamation stating that any disputes between natives and government officials should be adjudicated by an agreed upon third party is still in effect.Mr. Swinwood says after exhaustive research and consultation, he has come to the conclusion that Canada simply has no jurisdiction over natives in this country.

There’s no legislation saying so. There’s no case law saying so. In fact, the law says the opposite, Mr. Swinwood says.”It’s an interesting and important question that has not been answered by Canadian courts,” said Kent McNeil, a law professor at Osgoode Hall in Toronto who specializes in aboriginal rights.He said there have been some cases in Canadian law, dating back as far as the 1800s, that touched on the issue, but that Mr. Swinwood is the first to take direct aim at the fundamental jurisdiction argument in court.

Brad Morse, a University of Ottawa aboriginal law professor concurs.”This really will be the first time that these issues are looked at in court, and I think it will be interesting to see what happens,” Mr. Morse said.

At the heart of Mr. Swinwood’s argument is the issue of sovereignty. Under international law, sovereignty is generally gained under three conditions. A government can assume jurisdiction over unoccupied land simply by populating it. Sovereignty also can be formally handed from one government to another after a conquest. Or a government can gain the right to enforce its rules when occupiers of land sign a purchase agreement or treaty relinquishing jurisdiction to the newcomers.

Mr. Morse said Mr. Swinwood’s challenge is legitimate because the first two conditions don’t apply in Canada, and in the annals of history there is very little evidence of Indians surrendering sovereignty to Great Britain. Where there is evidence of jurisdictional surrender, there is much debate over whether native leaders understood what they were doing when they “signed” treaties and purchase agreements.

Although this is the first time Canadian courts will be asked to deal with this issue, courts in other countries already have.In a landmark case, Australia’s highest court found the Crown there has sovereignty over aboriginal people and land despite not having any of the three accepted conditions for jurisdictional transfer. The court found that over time control of the land and people simply eroded away from the country’s first people into the hands of the newcomers and should remain there for the betterment of all.

Many years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court found differently. Judges there decided that the U.S. government didn’t have sovereignty over natives or native land. However, it ruled that basic human law as defined by U.S. statue applied to all people regardless of their heritage.

Some may look at Mr. Swinwood’s position as preposterous, but he says without proper government mechanisms in place to address the gross injustices committed upon natives in Canada, he is simply doing the next best thing.He said in a prefect world, government officials would come to the conclusion that they’ve failed the natives of Canada, and that Canadian laws aren’t helping the situation.

They would say they’re sorry for messing things up as badly as they have, cede sovereignty over vast tracts of Crown land, and let natives live in accordance with traditional spiritual, moral, and legal codes that were working just fine before the white man arrived.”We have the law on our side,” he said. “We have history on our side. We have morality on our side. What’s happened hasn’t worked. It’s time to try something else.””The time has come,” he said. “The government has had a lot of time to do this themselves, and they haven’t, so we’re going to try to force them to by using the courts. I see no reason why we should fail in this.